Jump to content

Deeside Gaelic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Deeside Gaelic
Aberdeenshire Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic: Gàidhlig Shrath Deathain
RegionAberdeenshire
Extinct18 March 1984, with the death of Jean Bain
Early forms
Language codes
ISO 639-1gd
ISO 639-2gla
ISO 639-3gla
Glottologscot1245
Deeside Gaelic is located in Aberdeenshire
Braemar
Braemar
Inverey
Inverey
Tullich
Tullich
Glen Muick
Glen Muick
Strathdon
Strathdon
Crathie
Crathie
Strathspey
Strathspey
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Deeside Gaelic is an extinct dialect of Scottish Gaelic spoken in Aberdeenshire until 1984.[1] Unlike a lot of extinct dialects of Scottish Gaelic, it is relatively well attested. A lot of the work pertaining to Deeside Gaelic was done by Frances Carney Diack,[2][3] and was expanded upon by David Clement, Adam Watson[4] and Seumas Grannd.[5]

Decline

[edit]

In Aberdeenshire, 18% of Crathie and Braemar and as much as 61% in Inverey were bilingual in 1891.[6] By 1984, the dialect had died out.

Features in Deeside Gaelic

[edit]

In the mid-20th Century the Scottish Gaelic Dialect Survey was undertaken when there were still people who spoke Deeside Gaelic. Features of Deeside Gaelic include:

  • dropping of unstressed syllables; an example of this is the Word "Duine" becoming "duin'"[7]
  • weakening of the /o/ to a /u/ sound, words such as "Dol" being pronounced closer to "Dul"[8]
  • slender nn being pronounced like an English ng [9]
  • mutation of f instead of being dropped is pronounced as a /v/ or /b/ or /p/ in Speyside[10]
  • dropping of -adh, words such as tuilleadh being recorded as tull[11]
  • conditional final stop; conditional tense was realised as a /g/ or /k/ sound in Braemar[12]
  • shortening of words; words such as agaibh being pronounced closer to "aki" and cinnteach being shortened to cinnt [13]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Gaelic in the North East | The School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture | The University of Aberdeen". www.abdn.ac.uk.
  2. ^ "Papers of and relating to Francis Carney Diack - Archives Hub". archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk.
  3. ^ King, Jacob. "A (re-)examination of the work of F. C. Diack (1865-1939)" – via www.academia.edu. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ^ "Clement (David)". bill.celt.dias.ie.
  5. ^ "Grannd (Seumas)". bill.celt.dias.ie.
  6. ^ "Upper Deeside". aberdeenshire-gaelic.
  7. ^ SGDS vol. 3: 360
  8. ^ SGDS vol. 5: 689
  9. ^ SGDS vol.2:167
  10. ^ SGDS vol. 3: 384
  11. ^ SGDS vol.2: 133
  12. ^ SGDS vol.3:281
  13. ^ SGDS vol.3: 281